Sydney, Australia — A shark bit and killed a 17-year-old girl swimming off an eastern Australian island on Monday, officials said, in the country’s third reported fatal attack in just over five weeks. Paramedics rushed to Woorim Beach in Queensland to treat the teenager, who had sustained serious injuries to her upper body, an ambulance service spokesperson said.
Police said she was bitten by a shark while swimming in the afternoon off the popular surf spot on Bribie Island, about 30 miles north of the state capital Brisbane.
The girl “sustained life-threatening injuries and succumbed to those injuries” about 15 minutes later, a Queensland police spokesperson said. Police said they would prepare a report for the coroner.
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It was the second reported fatal shark attack in Australia this year after witnesses saw a shark attack a 28-year-old surfer at a beach known as Granites in the state of South Australia on January 2.
South Australia has registered more shark attack incidents over the past two years than usual, with five attacks off its coast in 2023, including three that were fatal, and one at the same beach as the Jan. 2 incident.
Days before that, on December 28, a shark fatally bit a 40-year-old pastor in the neck as he was spearfishing off a beach in Queensland’s Keppel Bay Islands National Park, which lies on the Great Barrier Reef.
In the latest attack, a local resident told the Brisbane-based Courier-Mail that police ran into the water to help the girl but could not save her.
“There’s shark sightings every day,” said the witness, John Wadey. “People don’t say anything. It is common.”
There have been more than 1,200 shark attacks in Australia since 1791, of which more than 250 were fatal, according to a national database.
Most serious bites are from white sharks, bull sharks and tiger sharks.
